The mystery surrounding Stonehenge has a new theory as to its origin. A group of British researchers have found evidence that has led them to believe the site was once used as mass grave.

Archeologists at the Stonehenge site have found the cremated remains of 63 individuals and some animals. This new discovery will help answer questions about who came to Stonehenge and why?

"These were men, women, children, so presumably family groups," University College London professor Mike Parker Pearson, the leader of the team, said, "We'd thought that maybe it was a place where a dynasty of kings was buried, but this seemed to be much more of a community, a different kind of power structure."

The mass grave was found underneath the site that we know of today. But researchers believe that the grave was there about 500 years before the Stonehenge visitors flock to see on southern England's Salisbury Plain was built.

Researchers also found animal teeth at the dig site. Based on the way the animals were slaughtered researchers believe that the people who came to the Stonehenge gravesite did not live there annually.

"We don't think the builders were living there all the time. We could tell that by when they were killing the pigs -- they were there for the solstices," Parker Pearson added.

The Neolithic people of the time would have lived and traveled in nomadic settlements.

Theories and legends about the origins of Stonehenge have been part of the popular mind for centuries. Some say it was a place built for worship by the druids. Others believe it was an astronomer's observatory. There is even a legend that the Wizard Merlin used magic to construct Stonehenge.

The Stonehenge we know today was built around the year 3,000 BC.